Which X-box for my lad?

Just trying to get some pressies sorted.
My lad wants an X-box but I know nothing about them (still on a ps2 here!).
So which one 4GB or 250GB? Why would I need a large hard drive?
If I get the one with 4GB, is it upgradable?
Any other considerations I should think about?
Whats a good price at the moment?

If you're ever going to go online, you need the 250. Arguably, it's pretty much essential even if you don't. You can upgrade at a later date, but it'll cost you more in the long run. The disk is used for updates, of which there are many, and you can download demos to it which is worth the price of admission alone IMHO.

The same question was asked a couple of days ago; search the forum, there's a chunk of info on that thread.

I recently bought an Xbox. Went for the 250GB, as I would rather have too much space rather than not enough. Given you can download so much from the marketplace now, like games, game demos, media etc the 4 GB would get destroyed in no time.

I picked up a 250GB Xbox + Halo 4 + 12 Months XBL* for £150 from Amazon last month. They are not doing quite such a generous offer at the moment, but worth keeping an eye on HDUK to see the best deals.

On a sidenote, I got a free 3 month Love Film subscription with my Xbox from Amazon, common practice as Amazon own them, but they rent out games, and I can have 2 at a time for as long as I want. So essentially, I have free gaming for the next 3 months as well as access to their live streaming rentals via Xbox Live

As a counterpoint, I bought the 4GB slim version a couple of years ago. Purely wanted a games machine (not a media center) and I never play online. After many system update downloads, game updates and game saves there is still around 3GB left. I've not missed the extra storage but I knew exactly what I wanted when purchasing.

Also be aware that there are USB slots which you can plug a USB stick into for more storage space.

I have a 4Gb Xbox which I got specifically to use as a Media Extender (works with microsoft media centre) rather than a games machine. But not really for downloading media, but serving local media.

I have a 32" monitor to which it's connected as well as to my network via a homeplug adaptor.
The only "TV" in the house are the two tuners in my PC. We set the PC to record series or films we want to watch, then when we fancy watching them, just use the xbox to show them on the monitor, served from the PC. We can also watch live tv over the network at the Xbox from one of the two tuners in the PC.

Last night I also set up iPlayer on the Xbox for the first time. Worked a charm. Whatever compression Air is using these days it's bloody good. No buffering, no cliff edges, and no pixelation. Just good quality streaming.

Ah, glad this came up... we've just gone x-Box with the wireless doo-dah. Can't get a proper signal in daughter's room (and I sometimes lose laptop connection in my office when there's lots of other network traffic). Not a massive house

If I plug a couple of these Homeplugs in both problems will be magically resolved then? Thought that's what I needed, but nice to see someone else with it working. Good solution? Do you have to pair them up or do anything with the security password? Thanks!

press a button on the bottom of one, leg it to other end of house and press another button and that's it. Paired.

There are some utilities to monitor the network, but you don t need them. They really do "just work".

Home plugs just have to be on the same phase within 200 yards or so of each other.

So in a normal house, they can usually be in any socket and talk to any other socket. The different phase thing only matters in very rare circumstances when you have a neighbour using a homeplug network and they are close by and on the same phase as you. I think its the button pressing thing which adds encryption and hence restrictions to your network to solve that.

Re XBox, I'd say 250gb too. Bought one 2 weeks ago (just before all the deals appeared) & I'm enjoying it much more than I thought I would. Get music loaded on the bigger drive & you're set with a mini-media centre.

Get Kinect & it's voice controlled. Had more fun with that than the games. That said, definitely get Forza. Awesome game